


A Letter to My Abuser

by FKAHerSweetness



Series: The Mausoleum Rose [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Short Story, my name is the motherfucking warning tag, sequel to A Gifted Student
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:15:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28151484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FKAHerSweetness/pseuds/FKAHerSweetness
Summary: A man wrestles with a post-graduation homework assignment.
Relationships: Matthew Brown/Will Graham, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Series: The Mausoleum Rose [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2062332
Comments: 36
Kudos: 39





	A Letter to My Abuser

**Author's Note:**

> Halt. This is a one-shot sequel for A Gifted Student. If you do not know that story, this is going to be gibberish, so I suggest you about-face and...
> 
> Oh. You say you do know that story? You say you do know me? That you're one of mine?
> 
> Well, that changes everything, darling.
> 
> Come and get your love.

“Nonfiction?”

“That’s right! It’s socking you in the face — Jeez Louise, I haven’t seen an opportunity like this since, well, remember that nineties bestseller _A Child Called It_?”

“You think I’m like that?”

“Do I? Do I?! … Is that a rhetorical question?”

“Not really, no.”

“Well, of course I do, babycakes, I mean from what you told me — look at the similarities: big evil parental figure, a hopeless situation, an impoverished and dirty child with no way out, enduring wave after wave of mind-addling, award-winning abuse. He grows up, tattered and riddled with problems.” He pauses, looks at Will, plain and quick. “No offense. _God Almighty_ , might make your head spin! The sheer amount of dough we could make, me and you. I mean, it’s almost sinful. I can see it now: the trade papers bursting with the biggest advance since the last installment of that witch kid series — what was that called again?”

“Harry Potter?”

“Right, right. So, what do you say, honeybunch?”

Will sits in his chair, skin buzzing low with discomfort. His gaze settles intently on his cold pour-over, half gone. In the coffeeshop, it’s all lofty conversation and West coast accents, the lilt of Valley girls and guys, the heat of a Los Angeles September roasting them all pleasantly through the thin wood walls. Will’s hands melt, despite Matt promising these breathable gloves would be suitable for the heat. But he couldn’t have foretold the buckets of sweat rushing from Will’s temples down to his fingers.

Across from him, Mason waits, perky and patient. He’s a Californian whirlwind: unnatural yellow hair and summer-sky eyes that give the impression of youth, but there are crinkles at his eyes and laugh lines crudely drawn. He’s stuffed in a too-tight vest, cheap-looking fabric. The picture on his website seems taken of him perhaps ten years ago. Fifteen, even. When he wrote to Will, when he called Will, when he invited him out just to talk business, Will first looked at that picture and believed he was a capable literary agent, someone young and hungry. That’s what the staff at Emerson had told their departing fledglings they’d want. That’s what Matt had gotten. But Will looks at him now — this Mason Verger who hawed and hummed when Will asked about his previous sales, his other clients, who has a funny address on his business card that, when Will Google Mapped it this morning, looked to be a salon — and feels his heart sink league by league.

It was a long shot anyway.

“Well,” Will says, finger-tapping against the ceramic mug. “I guess I should think about it, Mr. Verger.”

“Whoa, whoa. Who’s this ‘Mr. Verger’ you’re talking about? I’m _Mason_ to you, kitten, I’m your prince on a white horse. What’s to think about?” His eyes widen as Will rises from the chair, taking his manila envelope with him. “Come on, sit down. Where’re you going? You came all this way to see me! Let’s hash this out!”

He reaches out to grab Will’s wrist and Will jerks away. He looks off, towards a table of long-legged tanned women. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“Thanks for the— oh right, think you could chip in a little there, babe? LA’s a helluva expensive town. I can’t buy _everyone’s_ latte.”

Will squints an eye at him, sighs, and tosses down a crumpled five dollar bill.

“Thanks, sweets. You think it over, sure — I’ll call you later.”

“Please don’t.”

Mason laughs, all joy and air. He waves Will off. Will can still feel those glacier eyes on him as he walks out.

*

They sat together in Rusty’s Back Bay office months ago. The lighting dim, the AC roaring against the baked Boston summer outside. Rusty was in a sweater, visibly chilly — he always adjusted for Will in his winter attire, didn’t want him to sweat during therapy. As comfortable as within reason, he always said, laughing.

It was Matt’s first time in the room. In all of five years, he had not once come up. He sat with his hands together in his lap, looking absurdly pious.

“Things’re mostly okay,” Matt said, maybe because he couldn’t think of another way to start.

Rusty indulged him. “Except?”

“Except. I’m not really good at letting go,” Matt said.

“And you, Will?”

“You know I don’t wanna be let go.”

Rusty hummed and looked aside to the half-drawn blinds. “So, I take it the homework I gave Will _hasn’t_ been going so well.”

“We—”

“We—”

Matt and Will looked at each other. Their smiles were too wet, too shy, for people who had lived tight-knit in a dorm room and then a one-bedroom apartment, for people who still showered together regularly, passing the soap as easily as the salt at dinner.

“I’d like to hear some _I_ statements,” Rusty said, giving them both his easy-eyed fatherly look that made Will’s toes tingle. “Please.”

A moment passed, and Will started: “I. I. Don’t know what to do with my body, when Mattie isn’t around. It isn’t like… Hannibal. Mattie doesn’t tell me _what_ to do. He just takes care of me, and I like it.”

“Do you _like_ it or do you _want_ it?”

“What if I need it?”

“That’s still relative to your well-being, Will. Matt, I know taking care of Will to the extent you have been must be weighing on you.” When Matt opened his mouth to object, Rusty continued: “No matter how much or how deeply you love someone, a weight is a weight is a weight. Your shoulders feel it, regardless of your heart. That’s just the way it is. Some independence should have worked its way into your day-to-day living, by now. When Will came last time, he said he still was having anxiety about going places alone. That when I gave him homework to try going to the laundromat, he went, had a panic attack, and suddenly you were right there, Matt. As if you’d followed him.”

“He gets scared,” Matt said, leaning forward. Hands out, as if to show the shape of their world to Rusty. “Nervous. People make him jumpy. And I knew he wasn’t— not that he wasn’t _ready_ , but just, you know, if he _needed_ me, I wanted to be around.”

“Needed you as protection.”

“Yeah.”

“As a buffer between him and the world.”

“Right.”

Rusty looked at Matt, resting his cheek on a fist. “Matt. If the past were kinder, softer— who would you sound like?”

  
  


*

Will is halfway down the crowded block before his cell rings. He brings it up to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Hey, cupcake, don’t you just hate it— we forgot to talk percentages—”

“Goodbye, Mr. Verger.”

“Wai—”

Will hangs up. He’s going to have to screen his calls now, or block that number. He’s not sure which would be easier. It’s been a while since he’s had his own phone, one that he used religiously. Matt tried to get him to pick one up three years back, then two years, then a year, and only now has he put his foot down. “You _can’t_ go across the country without a way to reach anybody,” he said and pressed the iPhone into Will’s hand. “Besides, didn’t Rusty say it’d be good for you?”

Rusty’s said a lot of things would be good for Will. Doesn’t mean he’s going to adopt it all. Things come bit by bit. He has to adjust, he knows. But one thing at a time.

His phone rings again and Will looks at the screen first — it’s Matt’s bright face lighting up his phone and MATTIE beneath. It was the first number Will put in, and the only one past Rusty’s.

“Hey, Mattie.”

“There’s the rising star.”

Will rolls his eyes, lolling at a street corner. “Stop it.”

“Miss your gorgeous face.”

“I miss yours too,” he says and can’t stop his stomach quivering. “This is… weird. It feels wrong being so far away from you. I wish you’d’ve come with me.”

“Well.” Matt pauses, tries — Will knows — _not_ to encourage Will’s codependency or indulge in his own. This is as much homework for him as it is for Will. “Anyway, did you meet with the agent yet?”

“Uh. Yeah.”

“Don’t leave me in suspense. How’d it go?”

“About how I expected.” He crosses with the rest of the crowd. Hurriedly, as if someone might be following. “He’s freaky. A weirdo. He definitely wants to make money but I doubt he’s a real agent.”

“What? Are you serious?”

“He wants me to write a nonfiction tell-all about what happened. With Hannibal. He said I’m like _A Child Called It_.”

“I’m—” He stops himself. Will can hear his throat clench. Will could so easily finish his sentence: _I’m gonna fuck him up._ But Matt won’t do that. Not this time. He exhales: “Sorry, Will. Sorry you wasted your time. We should’ve vetted him better.”

“It’s not all bad. At least I got to see some… semblance of what an agent would be like. Probably the only time.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

Will sighs, clutches his envelope tight. “And anyway, I’m still gonna do the other thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Will walks past a wide-windowed building side. The sun catches it, the blue sky, the scant clouds. It goes on forever, inward. Above: a flashing billboard that switches from HBO Max advertisements to a recent author photo of Hannibal Lecter, signing for his newest book at the Emerson College Los Angeles campus.

*

“I go back to it sometimes,” Will told Rusty — a long time ago when their sessions were in infancy. When Will was still skittish all the time. When the Zanzibar Gem to his right sat private and prim in its pot. “That place where I can still be _that_ Will, _his_ Will. The Muse.”

“And what is that place like?”

“Like… like a dark room. There’s this… dark, dark room. And he’s in it, and I’m in it.” He couldn’t say his given name, yet. Not back then. “It reminds me of his loft, when he was here. All cold marble. But black. He’s standing right in front of me: him, just the way I remember. Those eyes. And where he touches me, he leaves inkprints behind. He tells me _every_ thing I want to hear. That he… that he loved me. Needed me. In a way that was so mirrored to the way I loved him, needed him. I needed a guide, he needed to guide me. I needed a father, he needed to father me. The way he poisoned my mind with my own w-w- _worthless_ ness and then drove the horror of considering it from me. Washed me of any conceivable thought. And I tell him every _toxic_ thing I can think of, everything I keep knotted up inside me, everything I wouldn’t dare say to anyone else, not now that I’m supposed to be getting better. I know it’s wrong to go to that place. But I do go.”

Rusty listened, placid. He never responded until he was sure Will was done talking. “What should we call that place, Will?”

Will said, “It’s the Poison Room.”

“Your Poison Room. It’s where your addiction lives, it’s where you assume your peace lives. But those two things don’t coincide.”

Will wiped his eyes with a gloved hand. “Don’t they?”

*

Will’s already set his bag down in his room at the Glass. It’s small, just a single, but even this was obscenely expensive. The low view of the city on the fourth floor, the overflowing plants on every available surface. Real ones. When Will caught sight of the emailed bill back in Boston, he let out an objecting huff. Matt hugged him from behind and said, “You’re gonna go and relax. I wanna make sure you’re comfortable. Is that so terrible?”

Will still wasn’t convinced he should just be throwing money away.

Matt pressed a kiss to Will’s ear and whispered, “I just got my advance. We’re gonna be fine, Will.”

Will walks past his hotel, this great shard in the middle of the city. The sun lowers, so fat and round against the shoreline. So close. Will’s never been to this end of the country — the throngs of people gyrating around him; the heat and music and strings of homeless upon homeless upon teenagers who look homeless but their fathers must be rich. The graffiti, the scent of frying meat from taco stands wafting on a salt breeze. Palm trees whispering overhead, curving up into infinity. There always seems to be the shrill laughter of girls, whatever way he points himself. Boys hoverboarding the opposite way. A flash of Vans, a touch of Versace. Pearl-pink lips, nut-brown skin. Like if New York City had a bleach-blonde cousin. It doesn’t seem like the sort of place Hannibal Lecter would linger. He’ll be here for his event tonight, and then might very well leave in the morning. It’s the last stop on his book tour, a favor to the institution that honored him for one year. Will wonders how much of an earful Bedelia had to give to get him here.

It’s been so long.

It’s been no time at all.

*

“You have it all together?” Rusty asked him a week ago. It was their last session before the trip. Will was feeling everything differently — more realistically. The suede seat beneath him, the coolness of the air. The Devil’s ivy and Zanzibar Gems in Rusty’s office overflowing with greenery. Even when kissing Matt goodbye downstairs, there was some surprising electricity like one of them had been sliding around on a carpet.

“Well, kinda.” Will pulled at his glove fingers, pushed them back down again. “I mean, I have it all written down, mostly. It’s just out of order. You should see all the pages. And I had to rewrite— well, I caught myself rewriting it, cleaner, with better penmanship, because. You know.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think he’ll even read it, to be honest.”

“That’s not your problem,” Rusty said, smiling, shrugging. “The purpose is to put this into the atmosphere. To rid your mortal body of these words. They need to be said. What he does with them — which, admittedly, from what I know of him, might not be much — is complete immaterial. This is for you. Just for you.”

“I guess so.”

“If you’re rethinking this decision, Will, you could mail it. Always an option.”

Will’s hands stretched, the knuckles popping. “Right,” he said, like an afterthought. “But I feel like if I did that, it would be a cop out. Aren’t I well enough to face him now?”

“‘Well’ is relative. What is ‘well’? How do you feel, right now, in this moment? When you think of his face?”

“Like I—” He thought, licked his lips. “Like I could—”

_Come here._

He flinched. “I got it. I can do it.”

Rusty’s bushy mustache quirked in a smile. “Take that feeling with you, when you go.”

*

The Emerson Los Angeles campus is a giant eyesore like most things here. On Sunset Boulevard, it certainly doesn’t look out of place. But it doesn’t feel like home — not in the way the Boston buildings lining the Common came to. Once Will wormed his way back into the fold, Matt all but jammed people around him, the ones he knew would be _safe_ — Dr. Tanaka, and Dr. Chilton and Dr. Gideon, to a degree. Freddie lingered, watching Will from a year above him, with this breakable smile that remolded itself over time to genuine fondness.

Dr. Tanaka _yanked_ fiction out of Will. Like he had no choice. Will never got around to asking but he assumed she was a mother, from the way she coaxed him into her office and persuaded him to work and rewrite and revise and try this and maybe this won’t work but do it anyway, always with a radiant smile. Sometimes Will walked out of her office with a near insurmountable workload on his shoulders and couldn’t bring himself to be angry or disheartened, only dully surprised. He came to call it _sugar bullying,_ this particular brand of encouragement.

(“The work continues,” she said, once, the only time she hinted at the man who came before, who sat in that chair. “Someone can shear you, prune you into almost nothing, but if it started in you, there is a root that will grow eternal. You’re not done yet.”)

He stands before the building, soaking in purple sunset. It feels like he’s never met Dr. Tanaka before. Like he doesn’t hold a tepid degree from this place mirrored on the eastern seaboard. Like the last five years of his life haven’t—

_Come here._

—amounted to anything at all. Maybe they haven’t.

His hands itch.

He’s fine.

“I’m fine,” Will says and joins the line of students and staff and people filing into the relative cool of the building. When he’s inside, the air feels tight, full of scent like before a thunderstorm. Particles in the air, bouncing around. There are so many people here. 

(The first time Will and Matt went to the store together _without_ Will sobbing and running out, they celebrated with beer and ramen late into the night. Will remembers thinking it was absurd. He remembers crying with joy.)

At the far end of the wide room are posters side-by-side of the last three bestsellers Hannibal Lecter has put out in five years. A literary phenomenon after his six-year hiatus. As if he’d been burst wide open. As if the words would not stop flowing. _A Gifted Student_ was only the beginning. After those record-breaking sales, then came _Filthy_ , which took the 2021 Booker Prize, and now _The Gimp in the Graveyard_ , the cover of which Will can’t seem to escape: this grey-and-black chalk drawing with an infinitesimal white cutout of a man standing amid tombstones. His covers are always so _insistent_. Will touches his copy as he purchases it from the front desk, the ridges felt through his gloves. The woman who sells it to him, an employee of Emerson, looks at him twice.

He has never forgotten. It is impossible. Unthinkable. But sometimes, in the gentle enclosure Matt and his small circle has built for him in Boston, it skips his mind: how Will’s face comes into circulation again every time Hannibal Lecter publishes another novel. Tabloids reminiscing, throwing out old photos of teen Will in furs and black, eyes like those of the ferryman’s across the dead river. _Lest we forget_ and _How is Will Graham doing now?_

How is he doing now?

“I’m fine,” Will murmurs. He follows the crowd into the cold auditorium.

It’s dark. The single light focuses on the front of the room and the empty podium. The air conditioner blasts the way it does in Rusty’s office, jostling the plant leaves. They’ve grown over the course of five years. Will has watched them. Long after Matt took over the payments of his sessions from Dr. Chilton and Dr. Gideon. That place where Will grew inch by inch, where he kept his hands from Rusty’s darlings, and hoped he would one day be as verdant and beautiful, as carefree. If Rusty could grow these things to such heights, have them sprawl across carpet and glass, he could surely do the same for Will.

There is such a buzz across the crowd, all students and teachers and adult fans holding their copies of _The Gimp in the Graveyard_. Someone whispers, “How’m I gonna not faint when he signs my book?”

“Oh hush,” another replies. “You’ll be fine.”

“You kidding? I’ll never be the same.”

Will remembers: like he would never be the same. And he’s never been the same.

A woman walks to the podium, quick high-heeled steps. The provost. She beams and introduces a man, a literary god, who needs no introduction.

“—Hannibal Lecter,” she says and bows away from the podium and he comes out of the shadows as if he were birthed by them with all fine creases and leather. The soft lighting hits him in such a way. It touches the top thin rim of his glasses, bounces, shines, hits Will’s right eye like a migraine blooming amid the apocalypse, it’s a rose, a mausoleum rose, and the way he stands at the podium, Will never had a choice, he deserved it, the way that shirt presses and clings to his strong form, it’s Will’s gift, he needs help, he needs someone strong-willed to tell him what to do, when to fuck, the cuts that bled openly between his legs, has the bruise lessened, Will, you’re my favorite candy, honey, meet me, meet me downstairs—

_:)_

—Will exhales, harsh. He pinches under the bridge of his glasses and bends forward, face between his knees and breathes through the man’s voice over the microphone, filling the room, drowning the room; Will floats like a dead thing in the tide.

*

It was the second year anniversary of Beverly’s death. Will laid in his and Matt’s pushed-together twin beds. He faced the wall, covers pulled up to his shoulder.

“Hey, Will,” Matt whispered, like disturbing the dead. “I’m just going to the store. Do you want anything particular for dinner?”

“Why am I alive,” Will muttered into the blanket. The scents of them, together. “What is my heartbeat for?”

“Will.”

“I don’t want anything for dinner.”

“Will, come on.”

“I don’t want anything at all.”

He shut his eyes and the tears pooled into the pillow, wetting his hair. There was the sound of shuffling, the removal of a coat and shoes. Matt slid into bed, curled his body around Will’s, and neither of them ate.

*

Someone taps him on the shoulder blade and Will jerks so hard he knocks his head on the armrest.

“Sorry,” she mutters, this woman a few years his senior. “It’s over now, time to get in line for the signing.”

“Oh…” There’s an awful crick in his back. The lights are up. Hannibal Lecter and most of the audience are gone. “Thanks.”

She nods and rises with her companion and they walk off. “How could someone _sleep_ during that? So rude.”

And: “Hey, did you see that guy? Is that—?”

“No way.”

Will waits a little longer. He doesn’t mind being at the back of the line. Maybe it will give him time enough to collect himself. The auditorium empties into the next room. Will sits alone amid desolate rows and feels his soupy stomach sloshing back and forth. His hands swim in their own sweat.

How is he going to face him when he couldn’t even bear to hear the man read?

How is he going to stand on the other side of the table and hand him this letter?

He needs Matt.

Matt would be able to hold him up. Keep him from wilting like a stick supporting a sad—

_mausoleum_

—rose. And like magic, like a miracle from on high, Will’s phone buzzes and he grapples for it, shoves it to his ear.

“Mattie—”

“Hey, sugarplum, how’s tricks? You thought over our partnership? I sure would hate for this opportunity to languish on the vine.”

“M-Mr. Verger?”

“Mason, babe. Can you say _May-son_? I was just thinking that your fame, it crests and falls, and right now, what with Lecter’s newest tome out, we could hit a crest. We hit up one of the Big Five with this proposal — I’ve got one, by the way, hot off the presses, aren’t I something? — and they love it, they suck our dicks in gratitude, and then—”

Will hangs up. He still has to block that number, but there’s some voice in the next room, a woman talking and it sounds important so Will heads down the stairs and follows the last trickle of people murmuring, excitement spreading.

In the next conference room, the maroon carpet stretches underfoot and it’s packed nearly wall-to-wall. Hannibal Lecter is nowhere to be seen. Just a woman standing on a raised platform with a microphone. Her hair is lightly curled and she holds up a golden paper. It catches the fluorescent light.

“And now for the VIP raffle! Everyone, please open your front cover!”

Will watches as everyone hurries to follow her instruction. He looks down at his own copy and hesitantly does the same. There’s a red ticket discreetly pressed into the hardcover jacket.

“Ready,” she calls, and flips open her gold paper. “Number 187!”

Will untucks his ticket. It says number 5.

There’s a banshee-like shriek somewhere across the room, startling Will’s shoulders up to his ears.

“It’s me! It’s me! _I’m_ 187!”

There’s a bustle and commotion as two pale arms flail from the left corner of the room up to the front. It’s a young blond, a student judging from the dishevelment of his hair, the shabbiness of his dress. His shock-blue glasses ride high on one side. He shoves his red ticket in the woman’s face.

“O-Okay… okay… yes, it is you. You’ve won!”

“Oh my god,” he moans. He looks like he might cry.

It’s hard to know what’s going on; most attendants groan; a few look just as confused as Will must. Beside him, a girl grumbles: “That’s _so_ fucking unfair. How cool would it have been to have drinks with _Hannibal Lecter_? Ugh. Is that kid even drinking age? Like, what the fuck?”

Oh. Will watches the blond kid celebrate wildly at the head of the room, watches the staff member try gently to shoo him away. He’s sure he would have behaved similarly, if such a thing had happened to him at that tender age. He was never so high-pitched in his adoration, but he had every bit the fervor. It lined his every artery.

The rest of the crowd seems down for a moment, until they remember that they still get to meet the great author. They’re herded through the long halls by student aids and event staff. Will clutches his book, his losing ticket inside. He thinks about calling Matt again, for any kind of support, but before he knows it he’s in a solid line, the beginning of which is unseen. Murmuring making its way down says that Hannibal Lecter is at the front, already signing away, and oh his eyes, have you seen his eyes up close, and God is he handsome, and he smells good, he smells like expensive cars.

Will steps forward and forward. It feels like walking to a gas chamber.

He moves through however many rooms. Legs gelatinous, heart stuttering like a scratched CD. Finally he is in the room, _the_ room, and the air sings again and his hands respond and Will tells himself he is not property, he is a person, and his body is his own, he doesn’t have to be afraid, and. And.

(“You are not property,” Rusty said.

“I am not property.”

“Your body is your own.”

“My body is my own.”

“You don’t have to be afraid.”

“I don’t have to be afraid.”

“You are powerful, Will Graham.”

“I— I am—”)

He can hear that shrill voice again. Will peers over the shoulder of someone in front of him; he can just make out the grand desk Hannibal Lecter signs at. Just the side of him, a sliver, a thick shoulder beneath thin white fabric. And right in front of him is that blond student, his threadbare shirt revealing pale skin. He percolates at the desk like a coffee machine on the fritz, like someone seeing fireworks for the first time. Someone behind Will groans, “Is this kid for real? How long is this gonna take?”

But from what Will can strain to hear, Hannibal Lecter accommodates him. When the student says, _You are my favorite author, the only author, the only one in the world who truly writes_ , Hannibal’s tone is warm and polite: “That is very kind of you.”

 _Nicely_ —

 _Come_ —

“And what shall I write here?”

“Olly! I’m Olly. I’ll be— I mean, I won the raffle! I get to— well—”

“Of course. I look forward to it.”

“I’m in the writing program here! I’m _so_ excited to pick your brain, like— you know— not literally!”

“I’m sure.”

Will’s stomach swims. His head tumbles, as if through a dryer. He’s going to vomit. He’s going to vomit. He steps back, knocks into someone, presses his hand to his mouth. It doesn’t help. The thin coffee he had with Mason Verger and the half a bagel for breakfast come bubbling up through his gloved fingers and onto the carpet. People in front and back of him cry out. Will steps out of line and rushes back through the doors, away, away.

*

“You guys didn’t have to do all this,” Freddie said, her face pink and sweaty from exertion. Matt and Will stood in similar states, their shirts soaked through at the armpits and neck. Freddie’s apartment was now just a few boxes, dingy spots where pictures and posters used to hang, some damage to the drywall from nails. Freddie’s orange curls held up in a ponytail on this dry day in late summer, one year ago.

“Can’t leave a helpless woman to move furniture all alone,” Matt said, laughing.

Freddie kicked at his shin. “ _Fun_ ny.” She turned to Will, who self-admittedly had done much less than Matt. He took small things, packed them away, unpeeled and rolled posters. Matt had whispered not to exert himself. “Thanks so much, Will.”

“It’s no problem. Sorry to see you go.”

“Yeah, I guess. There’s not much for me here anymore. My step-mom says I’ve got to move to NYC if I want to catch opportunities.”

“Makes sense,” Matt said, wiping his sweaty temple with his shirttail. “We won’t be far behind you.”

“Don’t copy me,” she huffed, folding her arms.

“You don’t _own_ moving to a city!”

Will snorted laughter, his muscles slightly sore. It was the most physical work he’d done in he didn’t know how long. When he looked up again, Freddie was giving him this long soft gaze. From the open window, music played down in the street, streaming acoustic guitar. The sunlight flared in her flyaway locks.

“I’m so glad you’re getting well, Will,” she said.

Matt’s jaw ticked.

Will gave a half-smile and looked off.

*

Failure is something he’s become accustomed to and, if he’s really, truly, God-honest with himself, he has to admit it was _always_ going to turn out this way. There was no way he would have been able to face the harbinger of his nightmares, the very reason that all he physically _owns_ is misery, as palpable and necessary as a gut-organ. Will cleans up in the first floor Emerson bathroom and makes his way out into the night.

He walks through the hungry Los Angeles streets, hot with bodies and baked concrete. He holds onto his purchased book, his number 5 ticket, and his manila envelope with years of untold grief in chicken scratch masquerading as print.

The Glass is one way. The beach is another, just a long road off muddling into sandy shores and rolling waves under the darkening sky. Little points of light overhead. Bodies splashing in the white seafoam. Will is encased in salt. He follows his nose and sits far from others in his long shirt and gloves on a bench by a lonely Sno-Cone stand. He feels like any number of homeless people out here this night, and he tries not to cry but trying has never been his strong suit.

Matt calls him, because of course he does. Right when Will is bawling into his hands; Hannibal Lecter’s book sits on his lap, speckled with tears.

Will’s hand quivers as he brings it to his ear. “Mattie,” he sobs.

“Hey, what’s wrong? Are you okay? Will?”

“I-I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. I barely. I barely saw him at _all_ , and I couldn’t listen to him _read_ and when I got close to him in the line, I just. I just fucking. _Pussed out_. I ran away like a total pussy and now I’m sitting, just, _sitting_ on this beach, crying like an absolute _lunatic_.”

“Will, baby, you’re not pussing out. It’s okay, you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to see him.”

“But I’m not, I mean, I’m not _good_ , I’m not _well_ if I can’t even face him— all this therapy— what the fuck was it all for? Five years and I still can’t look at him? Why am I like this?”

“Do you want to call Rusty? You should call Rusty.”

“N- _No,_ ” he nearly wails, startling passersby. “No, then he’ll know I’m not better, he wasted his time—”

“He’s not gonna think that. Will, don’t you know he wouldn’t think that? He’s there to help. This is for you, it’s not about anyone else. And if you decide you don’t need to do this right now, then that’s the end of it. That’s the—” He pauses, and there’s this gnawing sound — Matt has come up with the bad habit of chewing his lip to bleeding when Will is discomfited. “I can come get you. I’ll hop on the next plane.”

“Don’t— don’t just waste money like that,” Will tells him, sniffling heavily.

“Stop worrying about money!”

“I’m fine,” he says and tries to believe it and tries to put that pallid belief into his voice. “I’ll go back to the hotel. I’ll just leave tomorrow like I was gonna. You can’t come get me, because— then all of it really will be a— a failure. We’re supposed to be independent, Mattie.”

Matt is silent. Will can see him through the phone: stewing, simmering, fantasizing wildly about all the things he wants to do to Hannibal Lecter. Will once caught him Googling _most painful tortures_.

“Okay,” he finally relents. A big breath out. “Okay. I’ll just… talk to you, while you walk back. Is _that_ allowed?”

It’s easy to detect a measure of petulant sarcasm there and it’s so ridiculous that Will can’t help laughing. Walking back is slow. Will’s legs are heavy after the adrenaline-dump. He’s hungry post-vomit but doesn’t tell Matt this. He doesn’t need to be trapped in their small apartment all night, thinking about Will so distressed he’s physically sick. Matt tells him soft things about his day: how their one cactus is doing, that he got a call from his mom, that he did all their laundry except the shirt Will wore to sleep two nights ago, which he keeps in bed.

Will says, “You’re hopeless.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

The Glass bleeds fluorescence. Will shuffles in, weary and sweat-dry. The lobby is cool, glass-floored, glass-ceiling, and Will’s own likeness is everywhere. It makes it seem like there are a thousand people in here. Instead of heading for the elevators, he takes a left down and through to the lounge. It’s darkly lit and even colder. A stage takes up the far back of the room; a jazz band plays with a woman singing at the forefront. Will heads to the bar, finds a secluded spot.

He places his manila envelope and book on the bar. “I’m back now. I’m just going to eat something before I head upstairs.”

“You mean drink something?”

“You know me a little too well.”

Matt laughs, this two-note chuckle that sends a relaxed quiver down Will’s spine. “Have fun.”

When they hang up, Will tucks the phone back into his pocket. Just like that, he feels better. His heartbeat slower, his breathing even. The bartender, a busty woman, approaches him and he doesn’t even stumble over his words, shy away. He orders a dry martini with extra olives and calls it dinner.

The band plays on. There is the hum of polite conversation, mostly muted. The one voice Will can hear is higher than others, nearly trilling, and Will looks over his shoulder after half the martini is in him. There, towards the back: the low purple lighting touches shocks of blond hair, riled beyond reason. His square glasses. Will squints at the only other person at Olly’s table, his back to the bar. Hannibal Lecter.

Will feels too cold suddenly and realises he’s broken out into another sweat. He takes down the rest of the martini, neglects the olives. Olly is talking at an incredible speed, and he’s so animated with his hands. Hannibal sits across from him, almost unmoving except for the slow nod and maybe he says something — Olly bursts out laughing.

Will can’t see Hannibal’s face and maybe that’s why he hasn’t run screaming from the room. But he watches Olly, expression overflowing with wonder. When he stops talking, letting Hannibal take the conversation’s lead, his eyes soften, mouth nearly hanging open. Like someone under a spell. Like someone in love. Disastrously in love. His cheeks and neck so pink, suddenly, when Hannibal reaches across the table and pats Olly’s hand. Olly looks liable to disperse into thin air.

Will catches the bartender and orders another martini, extra-dry.

*

“Mattie, hey—”

“Hmm?”

“Mattie, come on— wait, _stop_ —”

Matt pulled off, instant. Withdrew his oiled fingers. Looking at him in the yellow lamplight of their bedroom, just like that. Red lips. Wet. Hair mussed. The faded look in his eyes. His bare shoulders and the constellation of freckles that darkened in the summer months. July had stained him. Will thought if he didn’t have Matt inside him, he would simply deflate. There’d be nothing to hold him together any longer.

“What’s wrong?” Matt asked. “Are you—”

“P-Please, just— I really _want_ you, that’s— that’s all…”

Matt’s shoulders relaxed. He smiled, drew his fingertips down the curve of Will’s backside, plunged them back in. This slicked-up squelch. 

“You got me,” he said.

“That’s not what I _mean_.”

Matt placed his mouth to the juncture of Will’s open hip. “You know I don’t wanna rush you, baby.” He crooked his fingers and Will whined in the back of his throat. Will once caught Matt Googling _how to make your boyfriend feel good_. “I don’t want you to feel… cornered. Or anything.”

“I don’t feel _cornered_ ,” he all but sobbed. He’d been tortured over the last two years with kissing, sucking off, tandem handjobs, Matt’s tongue everywhere, Matt saturating Will in _I won’t do anything you don’t want_ and _we can go slow_ and _are you sure?_ Will didn’t know going slow meant putting glaciers to shame. “Please, Mattie, I want you to fuck me, please, unless— unless you don’t want to—”

Matt’s mouth against his. Will tasted the salt of himself. Matt pulled back enough to mutter against Will’s lips, “Don’t _want_ to? I’ve earned my doctorate in willpower. Not fucking you’s taking everything I’ve got.”

“Then— then, for God’s sake—”

Matt reached over to the nightstand. They’d amassed an unholy amount of lube, all different scents and viscosities, heated and not, and Matt grabbed a lavender-scented oil and worked a fistfull of it between their bodies. He kept his mouth to Will’s, swallowing his every miniscule hiccup, sigh, plea, and the initial hitch of breath when he felt Matt pushing inside.

“Just tell me,” Matt breathed, and Will felt the heat of his body, all that hot blood under smooth skin, and he threw his arms around Matt’s neck. “Tell me if. If anything needs to. Um. Change. Fucking _God_.”

Will winced. Even through the obscene amount of time Matt’d spent opening him, it had still been years since he’d had anyone inside. Matt pressing and pressing, slow and steady, a hand petting Will’s trembling ribcage. Will shut his eyes. Felt the heft of him, the girth, that searing stretch. Their dampness together. The breathing, filling the room. His hands on Matt’s shoulders, in their gloves. These were thin silk gloves Matt had gotten him for intimate times, after Will had sobbed himself hoarse over wanting to touch Matt, wanting to feel him, and being cursed in this way. He’d told Matt he wished _he_ were the one he could touch, the only one in the _world_ he could hold and not harm, but no, it had to be— it just had to be—

_You are not something that thinks._

—he was fine, he was—

_You will live here and be my Muse._

—Daddy?—

“Will,” Matt breathed, taking Will’s cheek in hand. Will’s eyes snapped open. “Hey, look at me.” Will’s body clutched him in, desperate. “That’s it, stay with me. Stay with me. Keep looking at me, baby.” Will wrapped his legs around Matt’s waist. “Don’t go anywhere else.”

They moved through each other, a needle and thread, and the sheets soaked transparent and Will’s mouth grew dry with his panting. When Matt touched him, a few simple strokes, Will cried out, clenched, twisted, kept his eyes open. His whole body formed into one great tangle, a closed fist with nails pressing into sweet palm flesh, and Matt came in him and he had this surprised look on his face that Will never forgot and Will’s body opened again, all at once: an upturned hand ready to be held.

*

The singer’s voice floats from the stage. Her soft tone prickles along the back of Will’s neck, forcing the small hairs there upright.

_“Why do you build me up, buttercup? Baby, just to let me down.”_

Across the lounge, through forested tables, Olly has none-too-discreetly moved his chair closer to Hannibal’s. He leans on a fist, smiling, dreameyes like Will’s never seen dreameyes. Like Hannibal is reciting the Old Testament from memory. Maybe he is.

_“And mess me around. And then worst of all—”_

Will finishes his third martini in a messy gulp.

_“You never call, baby, when you say you will. But I love you still.”_

Olly rises from his chair. Will watches him from over the spit-wet rim of his glass. He excuses himself from the table and ambles through the left of the room, past the bar, to the restrooms’ low neon signs.

_“I need you, more than anyone, darling — you know that I have from the start.”_

Will slips a few bills onto the bar and follows.

_“So build me up, buttercup, don’t break my heart.”_

The hallway is dark, flanked by payphones. Will ducks into the men’s room, this wide white-washed place, and easily spots Olly’s frantic blond hair at the urinals. Will glances under the stall doors. They’re the only ones here.

Will goes to the deep-set sinks with their glass counters. He sets his envelope and book down and turns on the faucet, mulling. He’s got no idea what he’s doing, what possessed him to follow a student in here. He looks into the mirror and sees himself: no longer the fresh-faced eighteen-year-old he used to be. He’s been marred; sleepless nights plague him with dark circles and he doesn’t always look healthy. There’s a startling lack of color in his cheeks. He’s usually sporting stubble, too lazy or despondent to shave. His hair’s a dark disaster. When Olly comes bopping over to the next sink, Will sees their reflections side-by-side for the first time and feels a horrible stab of jealousy. He used to look like that, once. He hadn’t realized it at the time. But he was beautiful, wasn’t he? Under the smudged lenses and sweat and sneer. In spite of that or because of it. He had mountains of energy back then, and valleys of hope. What is he now past twenty-three and tarnished?

Olly meticulously washes under his nails, humming, of all things. The woman’s voice penetrates the walls, taking on an eerie echo: _“—don’t break my heart.”_

Olly glances over. “Hey, mister. You’re washing your gloves.”

Will jolts. He looks down and his gloves are covered in suds. “Oh,” he says.

“Well, at least they’re clean,” Olly chirps. He brightens at the book on the counter. “ _Hey_! Were you at Hannibal Lecter’s event tonight, too?! Wow, that’s so crazy!”

“Oh,” Will says again. “Yeah, I was.”

“I’m having drinks with him,” Olly offers, almost unable to contain himself. “He’s _literally_ the most interesting man in the world. Like that old commercial? He’s like that guy. He’s done everything, been everywhere, met everyone. Everything he says, it just sounds like— like _music._ And when we’re talking, he makes me feel like I’m the only one in the room. The only one in the world.”

“You don’t, uh… think he’s a little creepy?”

Olly’s eyebrows shoot up into his bangs. “ _Creepy_?”

“Or something.”

“Definitely not. He’s _so_ chill. Like I know I talk a lot, everyone tells me that, but he just _listens_. I was worried he was bored at first, but he invited me up to his suite, so I can’t be doing too badly, huh? I think he likes me!”

“ _What_?” Will’s voice cracks. “Well, you’re not really gonna _go—_ ”

“Like hell I’m not! God, I just— I can’t imagine— I feel like it’s some kind of dream and I’ll wake up any second! And even if I do, this dream will literally be the pinnacle of my life, no contest. Seriously.”

Will asks, soft, “How old are you?”

The restroom door opens, another man birthed into the wide room. He sends a quizzical glance to the two standing at the sinks before ducking into a stall.

Olly quirks his lips at Will. “Hey, do I know you from someplace? You look super familiar. You go to Emerson? Are you a grad student?”

Will doesn’t know what to say.

“So, what’s your favorite Lecter novel?”

Will doesn’t know what to say.

Olly finally sighs. “You’re a weird dude, Mister Gloves. Anyway, see you at school, maybe.” He skirts around Will, exits the restroom almost soundlessly.

Will stands there for he doesn’t know how long.

*

“I got a surprise,” Matt said.

Will looked up from his aloo gobi. Indian takeout from the place down the street. It’s what they’d fallen into every Wednesday, when Matt had neither classes nor work at CVS. Now that Emerson was over, it was only CVS and the eternal respectable-job hunt. Will wiped his mouth with the back of a glove.

“Huh? What surprise?”

“Just don’t lose it. Just keep calm.”

“You’re making me nervous…”

Matt had this big grin on his face, dimple in rare form. He shoved his cracked phone across their tiny wooden dining table. It was open to an email. Will peered over his plate and read.

_Good morning, Matthew! Loved your manuscript. Would like to set up a phone conference to speak more about it. What times work for you?_

Will chewed carefully. “Wow. Is this from that agent you talked about?”

“Yeah! When I sent it to her, I didn’t expect this fast of a turnaround.” Matt’s face was pink, shiny, and his eyes twinkled. He looked so young then; once again the boy in shoddy webcam pictures, a thousand miles away. “Well? What do you think? I think she’s going to offer representation! God, and after so many fucking rejections. I don’t wanna jinx it but, fuck.”

“Sounds like she will.”

“Aren’t you happy? This could be it!”

“Of course I’m happy for you, Mattie,” Will said, and took another piece of naan. “Goes without saying.”

*

They spend a while longer in the lounge. Will watches from the bar and brines himself in alcohol. The bartender delivers a bowl of spicy olives, perhaps to encourage Will to eat. He largely ignores them. Finally, nearing midnight — when Will is drunk, and Olly is likely twenty miles past drunk from all the appletinis he’s been fed — Hannibal rises from the table and offers his hand to Olly in a gentlemanly fashion. They move through the tables, exiting the lounge. The jazz band moves on to _Come and Get Your Love_.

Will follows at length. He tries to look casual, bumping into people and potted palms alike. They disappear into a mirrored elevator and Will catches sight of himself from afar: this ghostly shadow stalking people in their hotel. What has he become?

He watches their elevator go up to the forty-ninth floor, the very top. Of course. The summit of every mountain. Will secretes himself into the adjacent elevator and follows, rising into the sky.

He clutches _The Gimp in the Graveyard_ to his chest. He feels it pulsate.

There has been such an emptiness in him since he stopped reading for pleasure. No Hannibal Lecter novels. Nothing, past those short stories and books he had to read in the program. Sometimes that was too much for him and he would tell Matt to give him the summarized version. Matt would lean into him at night, under the covers, and tell him these things, bedtime stories, and Will’s chest rose and fell with his soon-to-be sleeping.

How many words has he missed out on?

How many words will Olly miss out on?

The elevator dings primly and allows Will out at the summit of the mountain. He sways in the threshold and emerges between two overgrown ferns. It’s so quiet here. There aren’t many doors like down on Will’s floor. This is reserved for the presidential suite. Will follows the curve of the hall dotted by plants his size and larger. Then, further down: the two of them at a tall pair of doors, oaken and engraved. Olly’s giggling, flushed with alcohol. Hannibal’s back to Will.

His heartbeat. In his mouth. In his head. It thunders through his head.

He’s out from behind the plants and standing in the hallway, freezing and burning all at once.

Olly catches sight of him. “ _Hey_ ,” he says, tapping Hannibal’s arm as he uses a keycard on the door. “It’s Mister Gloves!”

Hannibal turns to look. Will’s whole body demands two things: run away and run towards him. He compromises and walks forward step by halting step, shins moving through blood, bits of viscera and bone. He can’t stop looking at Hannibal’s face — straight on, like this. The man looks much the same, like that last day in the loft with rain shadows crossing his face. Only this: the crinkles at his eyes have increased and his hair is more ash than brown, lengthened to the bottom of his neck. He is not working and yet he wears those thin frames. He does not look surprised.

“Ah, Will,” Hannibal says; a death knell and a homecoming. “At last you show yourself.”

Will finds his voice, against all odds: “You… you _knew_ I was here?”

“You are not as stealthy as you may think. I can _always_ see you having your conniptions in the corner. Your own way of greeting me.”

“Will,” Olly murmurs, eyes swimming with appletini shine. “You mean— like _Will_ Will? Like _Will Graham_? I _knew_ I recognized you!” He tugs at Hannibal’s shirtsleeve. “Oh my gosh, it’s really Will Graham!”

“Yes, I’m aware.”

Will swallows over something slimy. “I need to talk to you… Hannibal. Alone.”

Hannibal just looks at him, weighing his entire existence. Will feels a little clock ticking in his body. Smoke leaks out of all his exit wounds.

“Oh no, do I have to leave, Hannibal?” Olly asks, sending big glossy eyes up at the man. “I’ll be quiet— I wanna hear thi—”

Will reaches over and snatches Olly by the shoulders. He is so thin; Will’s gloved fingers curl around his frail bones. Will has never been very strong. But Olly could not wrench himself away now if he tried. Will pulls him in, close and tight and grounding, like a family member in the throes of hysteria.

“You stupid little boy,” he hisses in Olly’s face, their glasses fogging together, “you get out of here. You have— you have no earthly _idea_ — what I’m saving you from. What he can do to you. What he’s done to me, you think— you think those tabloids said it all? You think they said even half of it? _He raped me_ and they called me a _boytoy_. His fans built online forums _making fun_ of me. Calling me a crybaby and a starfucker. Posting these pictures that I don’t know where they— and they all found my email and I had to get rid of it and they found my parents and asked them if I was a slut when I was a kid too and my whole life was woven suddenly just to please people like you— and people like _me_ — like how I _used_ to be. Anything that popped up online about this guy I devoured and I thought I was special for memorizing everything: dates, times, quotes, trivia, and then I got devoured _by_ it. _That’s_ what happened.” He shakes Olly once, snapping his neck back and forth, rattling his glasses askew. “But even after all that, what do they _know_ about me? And what do _you_ know about me? Nothing. Nothing at all.”

His hands heat in their gloves and Will releases the boy. Olly stands trembling, blinking away tears. All his smiling and pink blushing gone. He can’t look either one of them in the eye — just at the floor, and then he turns and goes for the elevator, pressing, pressing, sliding in and leaving the summit behind.

It’s quiet again, filled only with Will’s harsh breathing.

“Well.” Hannibal exhales. “You have successfully frightened off my entertainment for the evening. I cannot say I’m truly shocked by this development. When I saw you at the reading, I knew it portended some annoyance.”

Will’s gaze skitters along the carpet. “I-I didn’t do anything but tell him what’s what.”

“Your tantrums did have a certain _je ne sais quoi_ to them when you were younger. There is something compelling about a child screaming for attention — the id unchained, as it were. But you are a little old for tantrums now, Will.”

Will’s underskin itches.

“What is it you want from me?”

Will looks half at him. It still hurts to look full-on. The same with the sun, or an eclipse. “I came… a long way to be here tonight. Will you let me tell you?”

“Tell me,” Hannibal says. “You want to tell me?”

“I think so.” The book and envelope in his hand each have the mass of a dead star. “I think.”

(He has considered, in the brief time between the lounge and this hallway: he does not think he could stand to have the man look at something he wrote again. No, not again.)

Hannibal eyes him slow, up and down. Will feels himself being calculated. He stands there and takes it, as much as he can. Hannibal turns back to his doors and uses the keycard. They click open and he walks in, allowing room for Will to follow. Will follows.

*

“If you need anything, anything at all—” Dr. Chilton said, his hand hovering over Will’s shoulder just outside Explorer. The four of them — Dr. Chilton, Dr. Gideon, Matt and Will himself — had spent a tepid celebratory dinner there. Conversation moved smoother than Will had expected and he kept his eyes on his tablemates, didn’t pay overmuch attention to the few gawkers murmuring his name from other tables. Now, amid the lamplight and the sluggish Tremont Street foot traffic, it was time to say goodnight.

Dr. Gideon finished for him: “You will work wonders, Will Graham.”

Will shrugged, half-smiling. He and Matt thanked them for dinner and they parted ways.

“Why does it feel like we’ll never see them again? Emerson’s done but I’m still living in the city. Still.” Will asked Matt at the crosswalk. The stars were muted by fluorescence. “It’s like I’ll never see them again.” He looked at his gloved hands in the headlight flare. “Like I’ll disappear.”

Matt put his arm around Will and pulled him close. He whispered: “You’re okay, Will. Nobody’s going anywhere. You’re fine. You’re solid. You’re _here_.”

Will breathed in deep for three counts and out steadily for seven counts.

*

When the door shuts behind him, he hears it first; he hadn’t realized he closed his eyes. He opens them to the wide expanse of the suite’s living area and the glass everywhere and the flood of greenery, the scent of fresh oxygen. Plants hanging from the ceiling, their tendrils coiling down, reaching for the plush carpet. Philodendrons and rhododendrons potted below. It feels like a different world. An alien planet. Gushing with life. Will inhales a foriegn atmosphere.

He wipes away a stray tear.

Hannibal goes to the wet bar near the back of the room. He pours a small glass of bourbon, whiskey, something amber, and turns to look at Will, raising the glass to his lips.

“You have the floor,” he says. When he presses the glass to his mouth, there is a lilt there, like a smile. Will frightened off Hannibal’s entertainment for the night — he must replace it. Do a dance? Cry hysterically? Make sad declarations about a life that could have been? It’s all just part of the show.

There is so much air here. Like in Rusty’s office. Things breathing, living, around him. Will takes the envelope from the book, fumbles, opens it, drops the book to the carpet. He bites his lips, takes the forty-someodd pages out. They quiver in his grasp. He looks at the first page, realizes he shouldn’t start there, maybe— 

“Will,” Dr. Lecter urges.

Will’s thoughts quiver. No. Hannibal said that. It’s _Hannibal_.

(“He doesn’t have any control over you. He’s not your professor anymore.”

“Yeah, but—”

“You can’t give him that kind of power. Naming is a statement of intent.”)

Will settles on a page. It’s all the same anyway. It doesn’t matter. These splotches where the ink ran, where he cried. The wrinkles, the wetness. He is.

“I am,” Will says, finding someplace. “Um. Dear Dr.— Hannibal Lecter, I am.” He can’t see the words anymore. They’re all wet. Why are they _all_ wet? His heart is in his head, pounding like a tumor. “I am so m-messed up inside. And I think it’s— I think it’s all your fault. You did this to me, when I was— when I was young, too young to know better. I-I trusted you, I looked up to you. I wanted you to like me for… me. I thought about you all the time, how I’d show you my work and you’d be impressed, but when that didn’t happen, I-I got confused. After Bev—” His voice breaks and almost doesn’t mend. “After Bev. It felt like you wanted to help— help me, because of how I am, my hands, but you used me all up until there was nothing left. You took me out to your house and r-raped me and it took me so _long_ to realise that’s what you did. The first time I-I-I ever said _rape_ to my therapist, I felt like I was gonna die, like I couldn’t breathe, like someone forced my head underwater, and I couldn’t have sex normal for the longest time— years, it took years before I— before I could do _anything at all_ normal. Even going to the store. Even getting coffee, sometimes I— I feel bugs crawling in my mouth.” A page, another page. He still can’t see the words, but he remembers. “And getting through Emerson, I was— I was just a charity case, I was a nobody except for what you made me, I was your toy left behind, I was the kid the freshmen whispered about until I walked across that stage and I felt _nothing_ when they put a diploma in my hand. I didn’t earn it. I-I didn’t do anything. They pushed me through. The admins, my teachers all thinking I deserved it because I suffered. And what do I have to sh-show for it?” Another page. “A half-finished project I-I won’t even let Mattie read because if he looked at it, he’d see where you were, all the places you walked— I— I fucking h-hate you, Hannibal Lecter, I hate you, you are the worst thing that e-ever happened to me and I’m parentless and sad, just a shadow, because of you— you— I wish I’d never met you— I wish I’d never been brought into your world— and— and—”

The room darkens. Will’s pulse hums. His face is all wet, all wet, and when he blinks it’s fresh and hot tears running down the plains of his cheeks to meet at his chin. The room… darkens. Will drops the pages and they flutter around him like dead rose petals. He stands there amid the breathing verdure. The walls turn black with sludge. And Hannibal Lecter stands at the wet bar with his cuffs rolled up, his soft grey slacks, the feathering of his hair, watching Will, weighing Will, measuring Will: a cup of broth to be poured into soup; a length of ribbon around a present; just some _thing_ and Will knows this place, as well as he knows the loft and the manor way out nowhere. The walls dribble muck and it pools around his ankles, all black and killing him bit by bit.

“Oh,” Will breathes, his throat choked with his own longing, “and I— I _miss_ you, Dr. Lecter. I need to be in your _world_ , Dr. Lecter. And I— I— I _love_ you.” He whines, hands coming to cup his own cheeks, eyelashes sliding down. The shame overtakes him, complete, and he moves through it like a small fish in the mother sea. “I love you, I love you, I love you, Dr. Lecter.”

Dr. Lecter says nothing.

Will snuffles noisily, face burning in his hands. “I wanted to tell you for so long— I waited for you, Dr. Lecter, I waited for you to come g-get me and bring me home to April and May and our beds, our thousands of beds, and I would’ve tried to be enough for you— I replayed it so many times, if I’d done what you asked, then you never would’ve known, you never would’ve known what neither of us wanted to know. I think about it every day. I think about it every _day_.”

There’s a sound. Just gentle. A clink of glass on glass. Will does not open his eyes, but he hears the softness of loafers against the carpet and he feels it, his hands feel the man’s approach. When Will opens his eyes finally, the man stands in front of him, dark-eyed and waiting.

Will could look in any number of mirrors in this poison room and see himself: small, shivering, soaked with sorrow. He is just what he was meant to be. He lunges forward and attaches himself to Dr. Lecter’s button-up, clutching at him like he’s dreamed of doing for five years.

“Oh _please_ ,” he cries, head buried into the man’s chest, “didn’t you miss me too? You l-left without saying goodbye. You had th-the girls throw me out into the rain. Please, please.”

Please what? What is he asking for? He has no idea, but it feels so good, like vomiting up a deep sickness. His Poison Room in the flesh, here to make it all better.

“I think about your hands.” He rubs his hair into the man’s chest, wrinkles his shirt. “I think about the way you smell and how much you made me hurt. I miss knowing exactly what I was for. What I would do that day. I-I know I’m broken, I know I’m no good, I know I didn’t end up the way you wanted, the way you dreamed, but Dr. Lecter, oh God, Dr. Lecter, when I go to bed at night, I pray for you to say it was all a mistake, that I don’t need to be _well_ , that I need to be _sick_ , and I don’t even know who I’m praying to, but oh my God. _Oh my God_.”

The gusts of his sobbing. Like a tornado wracking a tiny house. All his tin shutters and flimsy doors banging in the storm. Dr. Lecter doesn’t move.

Will looks up, finally; the man’s opaque gaze watches him like a microbe under the glass and Will snatches off his gloves and drops them to the ground amid his pages.

He holds out his hands and says, “W-Watch.” When he reaches back, his fingertips brush the leaves of a philodendron. Just a graze. Will does not have to look back to know it crumbles immediately under his touch, reduced to soot. Dr. Lecter does not look surprised. But when the other plants in the room, each of them, wither and die in their own pots, Dr. Lecter shifts his gaze and he looks at Will now as if he recognizes him.

“I-It got worse,” Will confesses.

Dr. Lecter raises a scant eyebrow. “Or better.”

Will shakes his head. “Y-You’ll never change.”

“Why would I change?”

Dr. Lecter takes Will’s right wrist and looks at his chapped thin hand. Without much hesitation, he places it to his own throat and Will moans, uninhibited. It has been five years since his hands touched human flesh. Since he touched this man, who dragged him around the loft living room while Matt lay unconscious on the floor. Threatening to kill himself. _Who is the bigger fool? He who offers a gift beyond price to an unworthy wretch or the unworthy wretch who rejects it?_ Will has relived that moment everyday, seen it in daydreams and nightmares. His worst memory, his second skin.

Nothing happens to Dr. Lecter. Will knew, of all the things that have changed in his life, this one thing would remain. When he looks into the man’s eyes, there is that same knowledge.

“I must admit,” Dr. Lecter says, moving his thumb into the hollow of Will’s palm. He is so warm. “I did think of you. I left suddenly, but I was not without my own version of mourning. Your hands awoke so many dormant things in me.”

Will’s heart leaps against his ribcage. Again and again.

“My gifted student,” Dr. Lecter says, taking his other hand to stroke Will’s cheek, “my filthy gimp in the graveyard. You are always reflected in my work. Doesn’t that make you smile?”

Will bares his shabby smile. He feels little insects crawling through his teeth.

“There you are,” Daddy says, thumb rubbing gently at Will’s cheekbone. “My mausoleum rose. I had to doubletake when I saw you, before. You look so _different_. Poor thing, has no one been treating you the way you deserve?”

Will says no, Daddy, no, they’ve forced choice on him, they’ve forced him to say what he thinks. He says Mattie never hurts him.

Daddy offers a toothy smile that fills Will’s own teeth with static. “Mattie, is it? Did your learned therapist ever tell you how it rhymes with Daddy? I noticed his first sale announcement. He is a somewhat capable writer, proven in our workshop. I’m sure he will do fine. But _fine_ is a paltry substitute. Ah, the way you cling to any thin twig in a storm, Will.”

Will ripples.

“In this way, you will forever stay the same.”

_Don’t go anywhere else._

“There is a shower that way.” He motions with his head, and Will can barely take his eyes from the man. “Come here when you’re ready.”

_Stay with me._

Daddy takes himself away from Will, and Will feels a fathomless loss in those few inches of space. 

Of course. Oh, of course. The shower. When in Daddy’s presence, Will must shower. It’s a lapse, almost, forgetting the first knot in tying shoes. Kindergarten stuff. Daddy watches him with a sea captain’s eye— Will, a dilapidated dinghy. Will turns and notices, through the dripping darkness working in his eye, the door to the bathroom nearest the entrance. His skin drips off him. He makes his—

_This is for you. Just for you._

—way over. Sea salt soap? It’s unlikely here. Hotel soap will have to do.

_It’s where your addiction lives, it’s where you assume your peace lives._

It’ll have to do.

_But those two things don’t coincide._

Will comes to the bathroom door. His eyesight fogged. But he can make out the golden handle and it was the same in the loft and it was the same in the manor and he touches its cool surface.

Will blinks, hard. Oil slides down his cheeks.

_Miss your gorgeous face._

He hacks, suddenly, something choking him down deep. He whirls from the bathroom, grasps for the main door and presses through the thickest veneer, air turned sticky, thick globs of poison straining against his frail body. He hits the thinner carpet of the hallway, the bright lights, it’s light in his eyes, and he bolts down to the elevator, sounding like a man just delivered by the open sea. He jams his finger into the button, buckling at the knees. The elevator comes. He throws himself inside and descends the mountain.

*

“I-I just got this weird email,” Will said as soon as Matt walked in the front door. He’d been waiting by it for the better part of an hour, anxious with news.

Matt blinked at him, wide at first, then narrow. “Fuck. Did those tabloids find your new one?”

“No, no. I don’t think. It’s this guy, this literary agent in Los Angeles. Says he wants to talk to me.”

They looked at each other in the small entryway. Matt’s face burst into this solar flare, something so bright it hurt. He grabbed Will by the shoulders and shook him wildly. “I knew it! I knew it,” he cried, laughing even when Will yelled to be let go.

*

Will hits his room door with his bare hands out, slippery, coated in sweat. The gloves are back in the presidential suite with his book and his letter. Will fishes his keycard out of his jeans pocket and slips it in. He presses himself through the door.

His small room: bright with lamplight and furnished with living plants swaying under the air conditioning.

Will heaves, wretches, runs into the bathroom and vomits up gin and vermouth. He does it again and again until he’s limp, lax with his forehead against the cold porcelain. He—

_has no one been treating you the way you deserve?_

_the way you deserve?_

—coughs up a glob of thick saliva and goes back into the room. He pulls the dresser up against the door. He drags the nightstand against that. And a potted palm, angling its heavy pot with his shin. When the door is blocked as if to defend from an army, Will stares at it, heaving, burping, dribbling bile. He turns off all the lights and gets into his full-size bed, on top of the downy hotel coverlet, and shivers until he falls asleep.

*

Will woke on their couch in the blue light of the television. The popcorn bowl was empty. Soda cans knocked over on their rickety coffee table. This late, there were only infomercials and incongruent advertisements, nonsense that worked its way into dreams. Will felt Matt’s breathing beneath him, the gentle up and down of wakefulness.

“Mattie,” Will whispered.

“You wanna go to bed?”

He was still half in the manor. Its warmth and always supplied fireplaces roaring at the back of him. The scent of lavender cleaning. A fox draped around his neck. His hands sheathed in gems instead of simple cotton. Will breathed in Matt’s scent and asked, “Do you ever think about it— about if he hadn’t asked for you. If he asked for anyone else but you, I’d’ve given it to him. And by now, I’d be. I’d be.”

Matt ran his fingernails lightly against Will’s arm, raising goosebumps. “Yeah. Yeah, I think about it. But that didn’t happen.”

“No,” Will said and kissed Matt. “It didn’t.”

*

Morning comes. Against all conceivable odds, morning comes.

Will has sat propped-up by pillows, half-sleeping, rolling through nightmares and lucid dreams where Hannibal Lecter stood impossibly at the foot of his bed, unmoving, unrelenting, with a length of rope in one hand and the scruff of a dead puppy in the other. Will screamed and cowered in the blankets and managed to stumble to the toilet and vomit what became only saliva at the end. He would slink back into bed and stare at the blockade at the door and try to remember he was alone.

As the sun spills over Los Angeles rooftops, Will blinks himself out of a dream. The plants whisper to him. The alarm clock laying on the floor blinks 6:47 AM.

Will turns his face toward the windows and the sunlight fills his hollow places. He exhales.

There’s a knock at the door.

Will nearly sloughs off his skin. He shivers in bed for a few moments, sure it was only a remnant of a nightmare, and then the knock happens again, and again. Through the door, there’s a muffled voice: “Hey, babycakes! Open up! It’s your prince on a white horse!”

The shivering stops, slow. Will slips from the bed in his boxers and damp nightshirt, and stops at his suitcase on the way. He slept without his gloves but carries a few spare pairs in case of emergency. He slips them on, then has to shove the dresser and nightstand out of the way, the labor taking a strength he really doesn’t have. He answers the door, panting, a timid peer between the few open inches.

Mason’s expression is cheery behind his round glasses. Hair imperfectly coiffed. He holds a drink carrier with coffees and holds a bag in the other hand.

“Hey there, Sleeping Beauty! Look, we got off on the left-left- _left_ foot yesterday. I was hella rude. I _cringe_ just thinking about it! I was excited — let’s talk it over, me and you. Like civilized folks! I brought you coffee and jelly-filled donuts! Who doesn’t love a good sugar bomb before 7 AM, eh?” He cranes his neck and looks at the disaster of a room behind Will. “Hoo-ee, looks like someone’s a party monster. I honestly never would’ve guessed… You didn’t happen to be mixing it up with Hannibal Lecter, did you? I just passed him in the lobby!”

“You— you passed him in— you mean _just now_?”

“Oh yeah. What an unfriendly guy, too, yeesh — I introduced myself, offered my business card and all, and he just walked through me. Guess he had a flight to catch. Hey, this coffee’s getting cold.”

_Why would I change?_

Will swallows something down.

“Hon?”

“Was he alone? H-Hannibal. Was he leaving alone?”

Mason looks up in thought. “Well, he’d amassed a small gaggle of girls wanting his autograph. Coeds all drooling at his feet.” He clicks his tongue. “Lucky bastard.”

“No, a boy— did you see a blond guy— young, thin, glasses? Did you see Hannibal with someone like that?”

“Like a twink? No, none of those. He got in his limo and high-tailed it.”

Will exhales deeply, feeling watery in his low throat.

“You okay, button? Lordy, do you always make such depressing faces? You need a donut is what you need. I know these things. Does your room have a microwave in it? I think these drinks need warming — I jogged over, but you know—”

“Okay.”

“Great! … wait, okay to which part?”

“Okay, I-I’ll work with you. I’ll write— I’ll do that nonfiction thing. You’ll be my agent.”

Mason’s eyes enlarge comically — it would be comical if Will were in the laughing mood. Such as it is, he feels as if the laughter has been stolen right out of him.

“Now _that’s_ what I’m talking about! What a head you’ve got on your shoulders — with this tell-all, we’ll make millions! Billions! Well, maybe not billions. But shoot for the stars, that’s what my father always said. Hey, let’s pop a bottle, let’s hit the town, let’s—”

Will shuts the door and relocks it.

Muffled, from the other side: “Okay, I get it, you’re tired! I’ll send you some forms to sign — all on the up-and-up, of course! I’ll call you! Mason V. and Will G., that has a fan _tas_ tic ring to it!”

His hooting and crowing diminishes down the hall. Will takes in a huge breath, lets it fill out his chest, and sinks down to the floor. He sits there for a long moment, head in his gloved hands, and for the first few seconds, he ignores his ringing phone until he peeks at MATTIE flashing. He reaches for it.

“Hey, baby, how’d you sleep? Everything go… Will?”

Will looks at the carpet, even as Matt calls his name. The trepidation in his tone, the worry, the fear. Will sees it in his mind’s eye: the expanse of the forty-ninth floor hall and Olly standing before him, shoulders still in Will’s grasp. There he was, on the precipice, unknowing and young, stupid and adoring. One fat tear rolling down his pink cheek, dropping from that trembling chin. How else could it have gone? If Will had not dissuaded him, if Will had not delivered himself to that room in his place. He would be foolish, superstitious, to believe that Olly was his allegory, just another Will to be chewed up and digested. Much in the same way he would be foolish to believe Hannibal would have ever asked for anything else, any paltry substitute for real devotion. There were infinite possibilities in other universes. Will has landed in this one. It's done. It's been done for years.

“Will! God, Will, you’re scaring me! _Say_ something!”

“Mattie,” Will says, sitting in the quiet sunlight, “did I do the right thing?”

**Author's Note:**

> Did he?
> 
> Wanna see more? Go [here](https://fkahersweetness.tumblr.com/).


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